Jerusalem Besieged

"A beautifully lucid presentation of four thousand years of history in a single volume. Cline writes primarily as an archaeologist-avoiding polemic and offering evidence for any religious claims-yet he has also incorporated much journalistic material into this study. Jerusalem Besieged will enlighten anyone interested in the history of military conflict in and around Jerusalem." --Col. Rose Mary Sheldon, Virginia Military Institute "This groundbreaking study offers a fascinating synthesis of Jerusalem's military history from its first occupation into the modern era. Cline amply deploys primary source material to investigate assaults on Jerusalem of every sort, starting at the dawn of recorded history. Jerusalem Besieged is invaluable for framing the contemporary situation in the Middle East in the context of a very long and pertinent history." --Baruch Halpern, Pennsylvania State University "This groundbreaking study offers a fascinating synthesis of Jerusalem's military history from its first occupation into the modern era. Cline amply deploys primary source material to investigate assaults on Jerusalem of every sort, starting at the dawn of recorded history. Jerusalem Besieged is invaluable for framing the contemporary situation in the Middle East in the context of a very long and pertinent history." Baruch Halpern, Pennsylvania State University "A beautifully lucid presentation of five thousand years of history in a single volume. Cline writes primarily as an archaeologist---avoiding polemic and offering evidence for any religious claims---yet he has also incorporated much journalistic material into this study. Jerusalem Besieged will enlighten anyone interested in the history of military conflict in and around Jerusalem." Col. Rose Mary Sheldon, Virginia Military Institute "Eric Cline's Jerusalem Besieged offers a tour de force of the history of the city that has beguiled man from ancient times to the present day. Providing a clear grasp of Jerusalem's political,cultural and religious evolution over the millennia, it debunks many myths about the city and conclusively disproves the recent denial of Jewish historic attachment to Jerusalem. A timely, and perhaps definitive, account of this most holy and historic of places." Efraim Karsh, Kings College, University of London "Cline compellingly reveals how Amichai's 'larger circle of pain and time' encompasses one city, four millennia, and three world cultures." Tom Palaima, University of Texas, Austin "Jerusalem Besieged is a fascinating account of how and why a baffling array of peoples, ideologies, and religions have fought for some 3,000 years over a city without either great wealth, size, or strategic importance. Cline guides us through the baffling, but always bloody, array of Jewish, Roman, Moslem, Crusader, Ottoman, Western, Arab, and Israeli fights for possession of such a symbolic prize in a manner that is both scholarly and engaging." Victor Davis Hanson, Stanford University; author of The Other Greeks,and Carnage and Culture "[Jerusalem Besieged ] . . . manages the near-impossible: maintaining . . . the right balance in a book about the long train of conflicts associated with a sacred city settled, dominated, and coveted by Jews, Christians, Muslims and others over different eras, including our own. In his thorough vetting of Jerusalem's four millennia of conflict, Cline also successfully engages the broader issues of Israel and Palestine, military history generally, and the examination of the fault lines between religious symbolism and community violence. He even takes on the interplay of ideology and mythology, challenging tendencies to exploit beliefs about the city's past to advance agendas for its present and future. . . . This book is a useful, even necessary, read about the Jerusalem of yesterday and today. Perhaps, in

Eric H. Cline is a former Fulbright scholar and Associate Professor of Classics and Anthropology and is Chair of the Department of Classical and Semitic Languages and Literatures at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He is the author of several books and numerous articles on the ancient world, including The Battles of Armageddon (University of Michigan Press, 2000).